Mail Call: Are Married Women Looking Elsewhere?(Letter to the Editor)

Publication: Newsweek

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Many readers chided us for putting female infidelity on the July 12 cover. "You practically excuse--if not glorify--these women's experiences," one woman observed. "Overscheduled lives and stress? These women should deal with it--the rest of us do!" A man "sickened" by the idea of infidelity wrote, "This story needed to be told. Whether it be a man or a woman, it is a horrible and nasty topic." Another suggested that "Women have always had affairs [but] women in this generation are more upfront in talking about it--that's the only difference." Others pointed to the terrible toll of wandering spouses. "Infidelity destroys lives," a man lamented, "especially the lives of children." One woman offered up a challenge, urging us to "do a story where someone rejects temptation and finds lasting fulfillment--I have seen it in real life so I know it exists."

Wives Who Wander

When your cover story on the infidelity of wives arrived, I sat down immediately to see if you got it right ("The New Infidelity," July 12). You did. Five years ago my wife replaced our evening chats on the couch with an evening on the Internet, then got a cell phone and had the bill sent to her office. I suspected then that my marriage was doomed, but my repeated efforts to ask for the truth were rebuffed. E-mail and text messaging can lead two people to have conversations at a level that would never occur face to face. The Internet, not gay marriage, is the worst thing ever to happen to the institution of marriage. I was no perfect husband, but I never stood a chance against her office e-boyfriend. He would tell her how hot she looked at the office while I was reading my boys a good-night story. I wish this article was written five years ago, but I know there are many husbands who are now a lot more aware, thanks to NEWSWEEK.

Rob Lewkowicz

Rochester, N.Y.

The couples I see in my practice often suffer from the same ills that are listed in the article: unmet expectations, lack of excitement, boring sex lives, emotional detachment and feeling more like a parent than a sexual being. For those who choose the affair route, it seems "easier" to turn...

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